IP Lawyer Suspended for Not Telling Clients of Design Patents’ Meager Value
In a rare ethics prosecution against an intellectual property lawyer, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered a three-year suspension for S. Michael Bender. The discipline arose from a case that, according to a federal appeals court, "reads like a novel but represents the true story of hopes dashed, fees wasted, and dreams lost by hundreds of individual inventors caught up in the world of self-interested promoters who promise the world and deliver very little."
